Midwinter At Christ Church
December 21, 2015
Today is the shortest day of the year and, at eleven minutes past five this afternoon, we pass the solstice taking us back towards shorter nights and longer days. At this time when the sun is at its lowest angle, Christ Church Spitalfields can become an intricate light box with powerful rays of light entering almost horizontally from the south and illuminating Nicholas Hawksmoor’s baroque architecture in startling ways. Yesterday’s crystalline sunlight provided the ideal conditions for such phenomena and inspired me to attempt to capture of these fleeting effects of light.
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Thank you for keep coming up with new items of interest, education, charm and beauty.
Christchurch simply leaves you in awe.
lovely pictures reminds me that in architecture ‘the key IS light’ as Le Corbusier once said and its play on the wonderful proportions ans interior of Nicholas Hawksmoor is stunning…Louis Khan once said ‘A room is not a room without natural light.’
Absolutely beautiful!
Absolutley majestic! That building glows!
Thank you for these and every other article and photos we’ve enjoyed all year.
Merry Christmas, Gentle Author! May you enjoy some rest and some fine spirits!
Linda in Toronto
Wonderful photos make one re-appreciate the familiar.
Really beautiful photos, lovely bit of information I did not know about the winter solstice and the glorious windows. Thank you for enlightening me (pardon the pun!).
Thanks for photos. Light is pristine in picking up details.
This is my favourite Hawksmoor Church. Valerie
Wonderful light.
Thank you so much for your photographs, I hope we have a result to save Norton Folgate, when I lived on the streets in Christmas 1987 , Norton Folgate took me in.
Thank you
Absolutely gorgeous, I just wish there was some info on each of the photos to enlighten an octogenarian antipodean who doubts he will now ever get the chance to visit these places
Your gorgeous photos took me back to a time – could it be 20 years ago, maybe more – before the church was tarted up. I spent many very happy hours and days there, drawing, trying to learn about light and darkness, space, volume, weight. And about something which is really hard to capture – the spirit of a space. I loved the peeling paint, the dark shadows, the feeling of age, of it having been there for hundreds of years and having earned all those wrinkles.
It was a very special time in my life – thank you for bringing it back.
My favorite of Hawksmoor’s churches is this one. Valerie